Mets officials have told Rubin that Santana could potentially return in June or July, but Warthen said that he doesn’t want the ace left-hander to push himself too soon.

“I just don’t want him, because of who he is, to push himself to try to get there too early and have another setback,” Warthen said. “We knew two years ago when he had the bone chips that he wasn’t ready to come out. We had to talk him into that. And even last year he wasn’t going to go out in that game [against the Braves]. That’s who Johan is. Common sense has to prevail somewhere.”

Santana, who turns 32 next month, is still owed $77.5 million guaranteed over the next three years.

It will be interesting to see if the Mets try and move Santana sometime this season because of their obvious financial issues. Including the 2011 season the Mets owe Santana $77MM (not including 2014 vesting option). If Santana were to meet that vesting option his contract for the 4 years (2011/2014) would come to just about $100MM.
The problem with moving Santana is his injuries over the past couple of years, that coupled with is contract and the fact a team would have to give the Mets players/prospects makes it almost impossible for the Mets to move him. Unless the Mets picked up a good piece of his remaining salary probably 50% if they were looking for players in return and at least 30+% if they just wanted some team to take him off their hands. At this stage no team is going to surrender a quality major league player or class “A” prospects and pick up that salary.